Schools

Hannah Beardsley Students Prep for 'Educational Super Bowl'

Two schools. One book.... and an educational challenge.

 

Students at Hannah Beardsley Middle School in Crystal Lake are prepping for a Super Bowl of an educational kind.

A team of Beardsley students will compete against Evergreen Academy, of the Chicago Public School District, at 9 a.m. Wednesday, in what's been dubbed an "Educational Super Bowl."

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Teams from both schools will compete online in an educational challenge called Cranium CoRE, according to a press release issued by Jennifer Anderson, of Cranium.

Using an engaging and academically rigorous gaming vehicle within the social network, Cranium CoRE, the two schools will accomplish something few schools have ever done. The result promises to be a highly interactive, fun experience where teachers hope the students master the subject matter through the challenge, Anderson said in the release. 

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Beardsley and Evergreen students will meet online via Skype on Jan. 23, to collaboratively engage in battle using high-level thinking, text-dependent questions, and then defend their answers using the author’s words.

The Super Bowl showdown will feature the acclaimed young adult fiction book, Orange Houses, by author Paul Griffin.

The two competing schools are 50 miles apart geographically and separated by socioeconomics and culture. The foundation of the technology bridge built between these two schools is the book that students at both schools have read and the academic battle related to it, Anderson said.

Ron Ludwig, principal at Hannah Beardsley Middle School in Crystal Lake, likes how the Educational Super Bowl uses technology to entice and challenge students.

“In addition to the challenging questions, I am all over using technology to further engage our students in high academic achievement, which is just what this Cranium CoRE experience promotes,” Ludwig said in the release.

Marian Strok, principal at Evergreen Academy in Chicago, said the upcoming educational "game" motivates her students to focus on the details of the book.

“It stimulates the students to dig deeper into the text than they would normally and fosters great discussions,” Strok said in the release.

Andy Larson, co-founder of the Cranium CoRE product, said taking two groups of students who are so different and so far apart from one another is just one part of the program.

"....to allow them to use their collaborative intelligence to improve their understanding of the complex text of any book in a highly engaging competitive framework is why Cranium CoRE was developed,” Larson said.

Cranium CoRE is an online product from Thinkersize, LLC, a company whose founders have deep roots in education. For more information about Cranium CoRE visit www.craniumcore.com.


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